


100 Seconds

by Rheanna



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-31
Updated: 2005-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rheanna/pseuds/Rheanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if she keeps her promise?</p>
            </blockquote>





	100 Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> Commentfic for pouncer.

By his sixteenth birthday, John can strip and rebuild a gun in under ninety seconds, talk knowledgeably about military tactics, and hack everything but the most sophisticated network. He is growing up, Sarah thinks, becoming who he will need to be to face the coming war. This is what she has made him.

She has never doubted the rightness of that, until now. What's changed is that she's promised him something she never did before: she has promised him that she will stop the coming storm, prevent the nightmare she's lived with all these years from ever occurring. Sarah does not make promises lightly, and she means to keep this one, or die trying.

Death -- her own death -- does not hold any fear for her, and has not for a long time. But something else does. She wonders what will happen if somehow she actually succeeds. She wouldn't think it was possible, but her love for her son is fierce and deep and she knows that if there is any way at all that the future can be changed, then she will do it for him, out of love for him.

But if she does… What happens then? Even if she changes the world John will grow up to live in, it's too late now to change him, to alter the template of the person she has made him into. She watches her son slot together the pieces of a sub-machine gun and slam the clip into place, and is afraid that, if she keeps her promise to him, she will be burdening him with something harder to bear even than the mantel of savior. She will be casting him adrift in the wrong life. She will have taken away the only purpose he has ever known.

She loves him. If she keeps her promise, she will betray him. What keeps her awake at night, now, is the possibility that by her love she has already betrayed him.

John holds up the gun for her to inspect. "One hundred seconds dead. Not bad, huh?"

"Good," Sarah says. "But you can do better. Again."


End file.
